Kansas Democrats Open Victory Supplies They Had Been Saving Since 1932

TOPEKA, Kan. — Hours after Adam Hamilton became the first Democrat Kansas has elected to the U.S. Senate since 1932, staff at the state Democratic Party’s headquarters unlocked the steamer trunk of victory supplies the party packed after its last win and found everything exactly as it was left: 200 balloons, a hand-cranked noisemaker and a banner reading “Congratulations, Senator McGill.”

“They knew it would happen again, so they bought in bulk,” said party archivist Wilhelmina Toot-Garrety, 71, who inherited the trunk key from her grandmother, who got it from a precinct captain who said it would “probably only be a couple of years.”

The balloons, sealed since the Hoover administration, did not inflate, so volunteers held them up by hand. There was no champagne, since Prohibition was still the law in 1932 and Kansas stayed dry until 1948. Instead the party had packed four bottles of grape juice, which Toot-Garrety described as “fully a wine now.”

A typed victory speech was read aloud to the room at 2 a.m. It congratulated Kansans on electing Franklin D. Roosevelt, promised help for wheat farmers and asked whoever had borrowed the party’s typewriter to please bring it back.

Hamilton, a Methodist megachurch pastor who had never held office and was registered as a Republican until earlier this year, beat Republican Sen. Roger Marshall in a state President Donald Trump carried by 16 points in 2024. Staff crossed out “McGill” on the banner and wrote in “Hamilton” with a fountain pen from the same trunk, which still worked.

By Wednesday morning, Toot-Garrety had repacked the trunk for the party’s next Senate win with fresh balloons and a new banner. To be safe, she left the name blank and wrote the year in pencil.